Search Results for: rap sheet

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2023 ~ On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year. At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade? According to the quarterly derivative reports released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2023 ~ At a March 13 court hearing this year, prominent attorney, David Boies, argued in open court that the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase – which has more than 5,000 Chase bank branches holding mom and pop savings from coast to coast – had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm, elaborated on the allegation as follows: “As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge acquisition. “In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan. “Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 1, 2023 ~ After much delay and legal protests by JPMorgan Chase, its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, was forced by a Manhattan federal court to testify under oath in a deposition about what he personally knew about the bank’s long-term customer relationship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Epstein died in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner.) The deposition was held last Friday, May 26, at the offices of JPMorgan Chase in Manhattan. In a surprise move, opposing counsels agreed yesterday to release the transcript of the deposition, with some segments marked as sensitive and redacted. The deposition arose as a result of two lawsuits being heard by Judge Jed Rakoff in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. One lawsuit is on behalf of an alleged sexual … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 1, 2023 ~ On Wall Street, the business model is you eat what you kill. Jamie Dimon and the bank he helms, JPMorgan Chase, just devoured First Republic Bank after Dimon had orchestrated the worst “rescue” of First Republic in the history of banking rescues. Given the outcome, one has to wonder if this rescue flop was a bug or a feature. (See Related Articles below.) After 7 weeks of Jamie Dimon’s “rescue,” First Republic and its preferred shares had been downgraded by credit rating agencies to junk; its common stock had lost 98 percent of its market value, closing at $3.51 on Friday and at $1.90 in pre-market trading early this morning; its long-term bonds were trading at 43 cents on the dollar; and depositors continued to flee the bank. And in order to pay out all those deposits that were taking flight, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 3, 2023 ~ According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), there were 4,706 federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S. as of December 31, 2022. Of those, according to the quarterly report released last Friday from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a little less than one-quarter found a reason to engage in derivative trading activities. As of December 31, 2022, just 1,139 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings associations reported trading of derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the OCC. Ostensibly, instead of running a derivatives casino, the other three-quarters of taxpayer-subsidized banks were doing what taxpayers want federally-insured banks to do: make business loans; provide affordable mortgage loans to homebuyers; provide checking accounts devoid of hacking, identity theft and predatory overdraft fees; and not blow up the bank by getting in bed with derivatives, crypto … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 24, 2023 ~ The reassurances of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that the U.S. banking system is sound, stand in sharp contrast to what is happening in markets. This week, the shorts have found another easy new global bank target to try to take down after making a bundle of money betting against Credit Suisse, which was taken over for 82 cents a share on Sunday by its Swiss competitor, UBS. This time the global banking target is Deutsche Bank, a global behemoth we have warned about ad nauseum here at Wall Street On Parade. Deutsche Bank was a $120 dollar stock prior to the financial crisis in 2008. It closed yesterday at $9.65 in New York and is down another 10 percent in early morning trading in Europe. The weakness in Deutsche Bank is spilling over into … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 13, 2023 ~ Women have been demanding equal opportunity on Wall Street for the past 60 years. We’re pretty sure that equal opportunity to commit crimes on a par with the big boys on Wall Street is not what they had in mind. Confronting women on Wall Street today are two especially disheartening cases. In the photo on the left above is Caroline Ellison, who looks more like the wholesome star of a Disney children’s flick than a woman who has pled guilty to seven criminal counts for frauds she committed as CEO of Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research. On the right in the photo above is Charlie Javice, founder and former CEO of Frank, a company that was hyped in a JPMorgan Chase press release when it acquired it in September of 2021 for $175 million as “the fastest growing college financial … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 9, 2023 ~ Making headlines around the world last week was the news that the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Denise George, was fired just days after she filed a federal lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, charging it with facilitating the sex trafficking of children by Jeffrey Epstein. George was fired by the Governor of the Virgin Islands, Albert Bryan Jr. Unfortunately, those headlines and the mainstream news articles that accompanied them, fail to capture the worst parts of this story, which includes the following: the 30-page lawsuit filed by Attorney General George on December 27 in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York includes a “Sealed Document Placed in Vault” according to the Docket Sheet in the case; after the paragraph headlined as “JP Morgan Ignored Obvious Red Flags Relating to Epstein’s Accounts,” large segments of the lawsuit … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 7, 2022 ~ If you’re the Chairman and CEO of a trucking company or air conditioner installer or a computer manufacturer (or thousands of other companies that don’t handle cash and have access to personal and financial data on millions of Americans) announcing to the world that 10 percent of your company’s new hires last year had criminal backgrounds might make you look like a social justice advocate. If you’re Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of the largest bank in the U.S. with 5,023 bank branches across the country taking in cash each day that represents the life savings of moms and pops and pension funds, announcing that 10 percent of last year’s new hires had criminal backgrounds is not exactly a confidence builder – especially since Dimon’s bank has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with an unprecedented five criminal felony … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2022 ~ Just two business days after the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and headlines swirled around the world suggesting it had used its crypto token to perpetuate a massive fraud reminiscent of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the New York Fed thought this would be an ideal time to announce it was launching a digital token pilot with the serial fraudster, Citigroup. (See here for the unintelligible, jargonized version from the New York Fed; here for the decrypted translation from CoinDesk; and here for a sampling of Citigroup’s rap sheet.) If the New York Fed teaming up with Citigroup isn’t troubling enough, the New York Fed also reveals that “ Legal services are being provided by Sullivan & Cromwell LLP….” for the pilot token project. (Why does one need to hire a Big Law firm for a pilot program using a “theoretical” concept?) … Continue reading →